Engineering students at Harvard University have developed a cell phone app that, when paired with an ordinary metal detector, can be used effectively to detect land mines. Instead of just beeping when it passes over a metal object, these enhanced metal detectors present the shape of the object found below ground:

Land mines, with their circular construction and trigger pin, have an ovoid signature. The system designed by Jayatilaka and Gajos shows one red dot for every beep of the metal detector. With passes over a buried object, the picture shows an increasingly complete outline of the object’s shape, giving the de-miner an evermore detailed picture of what may be buried there.

“Using only audio signals is a huge source of inefficiency. The operator has to figure out whether it is harmful or not harmful. If they are not completely sure, they have to go down on their hands and knees and excavate every piece of metal as if it were a land mine,” explained Jayatilaka.

The students hope that their invention can be used by cash-strapped de-mining operations around the world.

Link via Popular Science | Photo: Justin Ide/Harvard University

One would think that a basic understanding of The Lord of the Rings would be taught in journalism school -- especially for future sports writers -- but such is apparently not the case. The New York Times corrected their statement that a bat was named after the sword used by Bilbo Baggins. Well, good for them owning up to such an embarrassingly obvious mistake.

Link via blastr

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Spock has a mustache and sideburns. This wonderfully bad fan film was made by Ray (who I gather is an expert on Betamax recordings) in 1971 for a TV production class at Ohio State University. He used a 1-inch open reel video tape and earned an A- for the project.

My vote goes to losing the mustache but keeping the sideburns. Sideburns are rarely a bad fashion choice.

via Fanboy

Who will win? My money's on Logan. Maybe if it was a T-Rex that had been crossed with a Great White Shark, that would be different. Click on the link to see the end of the fight, as depicted by Andrew Hou.

Link via The Mary Sue

Inevitably, you'll open your toolbox and find three Gungans but not a single Torx wrench.

At the link: Doctor Who, Back to the Future, and Jurassic Park.

Link | Cartoonist's Website

Enal lives in a stilted house in Wangi, Indonesia. His friend lives in a penned off area of the sea. Although this is a remarkable scene for us, it might not be for Enal's people, the Bajau Laut. These Malay marine nomads have a symbiotic relationship with the ocean which photographer James Morgan explored. He wrote:

Traditional Bajau cosmology - a syncretism of animism and Islam - reveals a complex relationship with the ocean, which for them is a multifarious and living entity. There are spirits in currents and tides, in coral reefs and mangroves.

Morgan snapped this amazing shot to become The Telegraph's 2010 Travel Photographer of the Year.

Link and Article via This Is Colossal | Photo: James Morgan

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Stupid, obstinate sculpture. Can't you see that the dog wants to play fetch? He's even presented you with a stick. Just pick it up and throw it already!

via Geekosystem

Bill Musselman lives in Kentucky on the Ohio River. When it recently flooded, he certainly wasn't going to let take away his prized 1992 Porsche American Roadster. So he and a friend lashed together three bladders designed to carry 7,500 pounds. It worked!

Built by AirDock, Smokey and Bill used 3 bladders that make up a system for supporting a boat up to 27-feet in length and 7500 lbs in weight. With the turbo bodied cabriolet weighing in at less than half that amount, the bladders worked perfectly. “Two of the three bladders were in the back where the engine weight is. It was very well balanced. It was surprising.” Each bladder has ropes that tie/lash them together and then there is a separate pump going to each section

Link via Jalopnik | Photo: Porsche Purist

Blogger rossum recently played Zork for the first time in three decades, and it inspired him to make a tiny model of the Atari 810 drive. This one, however, reads SD cards. The picture above shows his drive sitting on top of an original 810.

Link via Geekosystem

Adam WarRock (who wrote a great song about not knowing anything about Doctor Who) snapped this shot of a cosplayer at WonderCon in San Francisco. Does the merger make Wolverine or Boba Fett look more impressive?

http://www.adamwarrock.com/2011/04/04/thanks-to-san-francisco-and-wondercon/ via Walyou

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One YouTube commenter wrote "this is not funny in any way! the owner probably died? from an overdose of cuteness". Probably. Don't worry -- no cats were harmed in the creation of this funny video, made perfect by the dramatic theme music.

via The Mary Sue

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The Slow Mo Guys, Gav and Dan, acquired and filled a water balloon six feet across. They then jumped on it, trying to break it. It was quite a sturdy balloon, and the ripples that result from the impacts are neato-looking -- like CGI. The action starts at 1:45 and the balloon ruptures at 4:15. via Doobybrain

deviantART user Samuel Lee made this dandy leather hat and decorated it with a classic maritime motif. It's not a treasure map. At least, Lee doesn't say that it's a treasure map. Maybe there's a code worked into it somehow....

Link via Boing Boing

The cartoon blog Draw 2D2, I gather, offers a regular stream of mashups between different pairs of pop culture icons. Most recently, the artists there tackled Pokémon and Dr. Seuss. Jason Welborn added a few lines of Seussian poetry to his contribution.

Link via Popped Culture

Photographer Alain Sailer breaks stuff and takes pictures. Well, that's probably oversimplifying it a bit. The results of his high speed photography are really gorgeous, so check out his Flickr photostream.

Link via Dude Craft